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Henry Moore stated that in his work he was obsessed by two themes, the Mother and Child and the Reclining Figure. This is a major example of the second theme, with the upright piece representing the head and torso, while the lower piece represents the legs of the figure. Moore's reclining figures are always female because he equated woman with life, survival, fecundity and endurance. This work is one of two that Moore made as prototypes for a reclining figure commissioned for the new Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts in New York. The figure was to be twenty-eight feet long and seventeen feet high.